Here at FIRST, we’ve been playing with calculated metrics for a while now and we are very excited to see them launched in public beta (for Universal Analytics properties only). Google has limited it to 20 calculated metrics per views for non-premium customers.

Calculated metrics are defined based on existing metrics. They will help you to further customise GA towards your business’ objectives.

There are five types of formatting you can use:

Below is an example for each format.

Float

Page views per user

This metric will tell you a little more on user engagement – to be used with user segments.

Formula:

{{Page Views}} / {{Users}}

Integer

Forecast Final Conversions

This is useful when you have a multiple step process towards your final goal and you know the approximate conversion rate between your final conversion point and the step before.
For instance, if you know that 75% of users who have been fully approved to your service will actually convert, then your formula will look like this:

Formula:

{{Goal-step-1 XX Completions}} * 1.75

Currency

Cost Per Acquisition

Here is a metric that we often need to report on and still I don’t understand why it’s not a standard metric alongside goal conversion rate…

Formula:

{{Cost}} / {{Goal XX Completions}}

Time

Average Session Duration Per User

This is different than the standard avg. session duration metric, which is the session duration per session.
The avg. session duration per user would be especially useful to show user engagement according to their status (new vs. returning users, members vs. non-members, etc.)

Formula:

{{Session Duration}} / {{Users}}

Per cent

Success Rate

Success rate measures the number of a “success” goal completions against the number of “attempts”, i.e. the sum of successes  (such as approvals)  and failures (such as declines).

Formula:

{{Success Goal XX Completions}} / ({{Success Goal XX Completions}} + {{Failure Goal XX Completions}})

You can also find other great examples (especially the user-defined ones) in this excellent article from Lunametrics.

Learn more about Calculated Metrics on Google Analytics Help.

Your turn now! Can you think of any calculated metrics that would make sense to your business?

Happy analysis!